The recent, unprecedented fossil fuels crisis has highlighted the urgent need to rebuild Europe’s energy system to be more resilient, sustainable, and affordable. As long as energy suppliers remain exposed to volatile wholesale markets, citizens will continue to be at the mercy of fossil fuel price fluctuations. Skyrocketing electricity and gas prices already pushed millions of households to the brink of energy poverty.

Energy communities offer the structural solution to this challenge. By owning their own renewable production facilities, they are perfectly positioned to shield people from price spikes and provide access to democratic, sustainable, and reliable energy. The numbers prove their value: households participating in local energy communities can save between €500 and €1,100 per year.

The core of their resilience is a fundamental shift in purpose: energy communities exist to provide environmental, economic, and social community benefits, rather than maximise profit. This allows them to guarantee prices that are fair, stable, predictable, and transparent. By leveraging collective ownership to produce, consume, and share energy locally, energy communities effectively create a buffer against external market shocks.

To enable the uptake and expansion of this vital sector, Member States must take decisive action, implementing a series of measures with immediate effect:

In the short term

  • Provide direct or indirect financial support to community projects and emerging energy communities’ initiatives.
  • Accelerate permitting of community energy projects while enabling the participation of vulnerable households, and design prioritisation grid connection schemes that take into account the added social value of energy communities.
  • Facilitate access to PPAs for supplier cooperatives by implementing contract-for-difference type support mechanisms for small and mid-scale buyers.

In the mid term

  • Implement the definition (article 2) and enabling measures (article 22) for Renewable Energy Communities under the Renewable Energy Directive (EU/2018/2001) as well as Citizen Energy Communities under the Internal Electricity Market Directive (EU/2019/944).
  • Enable energy sharing and local self-consumption of energy, especially among residents under the same roof, through appropriate support schemes (e.g. virtual net billing) and financial incentives (e.g. grid fee reductions).
  • Set up One Stop Shops, in partnership with local authorities, energy agencies, and secondary structures of energy communities, to help local communities set up renewable energy and energy efficiency projects, in line with the Energy Efficiency Directive and the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive.
  • Establish a national revolving financial mechanism for energy communities.

In the long term

  • Put in place a national binding target for energy communities; ideally broken down by municipality, backed by a comprehensive strategy of measures.